Q’s With Jordan Anderson, Troubadour’s New Talent Booker

Jordan Anderson: I grew up in Tupelo, Miss., home of Elvis Presley, so rock ’n’ roll was always an influence in my life. That and my dad, for sure. He always had Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, B.B. King, Fleetwood Mac, etc. playing, which led to my original interest in jam music. My parents also loved Dave Matthews Band, which my entire family loved and who we love to see to this day. Unrelated to that scene, my first show ever was in second grade with Shania Twain at the Memphis Pyramid (now a Bass Pro Shop). My best friends and our dads rented a charter bus and drove up to Memphis for the night. So much fun. My dad snuck me down to the floor and I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

I can’t say I was ever in a “scene” per se, but I was always sharing music with friends, illegally burning CDs off Limewire and constantly putting who knows what awful virus on my parents’ computers. 

I went to the University of Georgia (go Dawgs!) and was pre-law before discovering the music business program, which David Barbe still leads. I took one intro class and was sold. Athens ingrained music in me from the beginning, honestly. Through the music business program, I ended up with six internships and got to see all kinds of shows around town. Music there was and is absolutely everywhere. A few of my most memorable shows were My Morning Jacket at the Georgia Theatre, Pretty Lights at a frat house, Cage the Elephant and the Head and the Heart at the 40 Watt and Patty Griffin at the Melting Point.

Pushy agents and mean managers?! What do you mean? Just kidding. I have always been very honest in my communication with marketing and booking shows and I’ll continue to do that, good or bad. Everyone messes up and if there’s one thing I’m taking away from the last year and a half, it’s being as patient as I can with my peers to hopefully receive the same respect back.

I interned there my entire senior year because I loved it so much. I helped with their NYE run in 2012 and then their ATL shows in 2013. Interning for those guys really struck my live music interest hard after getting to see the behind-the-scenes of what their team does in promoting shows, handling merch, show posters and even logging setlists. I saw a lot of history within that office and will never forget it. My favorite thing was answering the phones when the band would call, [Widespread’s Domingo] “Sunny” [Ortiz] always loved to mess with me. 

After college, I interned for AEG Presents under Lenore Kinder, Ali Harnell and Dustin Turner. That team introduced me to Nashville. Through that, I was teed up for the marketing director position with Marathon Music Works and Exit/In, sister venues at the time under Chris Cobb and Josh Billue. Marketing shows at two very respected and busy rooms helped me to meet so much of the industry in Nashville – bands, agents, managers, other marketers, radio people, promoters, etc. I became more well-balanced in my understanding of how the live industry works. I also bought my first show at Exit/In in 2016 with Rainbow Kitten Surprise. A friend had shared “Cocaine Jesus” and I couldn’t stop listening to them. I went to Chris and was like, “Can I try to book this band?” He was like, “Sure, here’s $500 to play with.” We ended up selling out the show, which felt incredible and is what made me want to be a buyer.

Yes. Lenore and Ali had a position open up a couple years after I took the job with Marathon/Exit and reached out to me to come back to be the marketing manager in the Nashville AEG office. I was super excited to be able to officially work with that team. It was primarily female and queer which obviously stood out to me. I started as the clubs and theaters marketer for the southeast and later became the sole marketer for the office, handling everything from arena tours to still promoting shows at Exit/In, too. Some of the coolest things I worked on included continuing to grow Rainbow Kitten Surprise up through the Ryman, Elton John’s final tour in the south, which he has since added more dates to, and Brandi Carlile’s six-night run at the Ryman, which was my last big project before leaving AEG.  

After four years with AEG as a marketer, I saw the buying role open up at AC so jumped at the opportunity. I started with them at the top of 2020 and while my time was cut short due to COVID-19, I was very excited to be working with a new team of highly respected buyers and rooms. Unfortunately, not one of my shows played, but I really value what I learned over there in those months I was active.

On top of all that, you’re also the founding Editor of Cool Stuff Music.
Yes. At the end of last year, I was helping with an artist driven voter turn-out campaign called Lift Every Vote along with a ton of other music industry professionals and artists. While helping with the Georgia run off portion of our campaign, I met my now cool stuff music partner, Jake Diamond. He saw that I was pushing out my bi-weekly playlist Tunes For Friends and approached me about an idea he had for an A&R playlist he wanted to launch. We were both unemployed and missing using our creative muscle while working in the music industry.  It was definitely Jake’s idea and I loved jumping in with him and helping develop the  concept further into what cool stuff music is now,  which includes an Instagram account and Spotify playlist consisting of us promoting and playlisting mostly baby indie artists we find in our daily listening. A big driving force for us is our love for sharing music with our pals which is the backbone of cool stuff music, and through thatwe have picked up a decent following. Keeping our ears to the ground and listening for who is up and coming has also helped us both in our new roles.

Who are your mentors and what did they teach you? 
I have so many mentors and people I’ve been so lucky to work beside in all of my roles but the two that continuously stand out are David Barbe and Lenore Kinder.

David is the head of the music business program at UGA. I remember sitting in his office crying halfway through my college experience asking for his advice on what to do as i wasn’t doing great in school and was struggling to convince my parents it was okay to be following my music dreams. His advice was I needed to study more to pass his classes (heh-heh was going out a little too much probably) and also he pushed me hard to go get as much experience as I could with the connections through the program. I’m so happy to have found the MBUS program otherwise I’m not sure I would have made it to where I am now and met the people Ive since worked for.

Lenore is honestly like my big sister. From the moment we met, we hit it off and quite frankly she was one of the first people I came out to. She is a huge role model for me as a fellow queer female in the music industry who absolutely kicks ass. She has taught me how to promote shows obviously through working with her but also has been a huge example to follow as an individual who goes after exactly what she wants trusting her gut. She continues to impress me with every accomplishment and I feel very lucky to have her in my inner circle as a mentor and best friend.

The history of the Troubadour, dating back to 1957, is amazing and has featured legends like The Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Joni Mitchell, Eagles, Miles Davis, Led Zeppelin, Tom Waits and of course Elton John, how will you carry on this tradition of establishing the stars of the future?  
Hearing those names and followed by the fact that I’m now booking the room they started in is still so insane and exciting to me. I plan to take my marketing background along with my love for booking new artists and continue to promote the best shows I can in one of the top markets in the U.S. in the most famous club in the world!

You’re also following quite a line of Troubadour music bookers, including Amy Madrigali, Alex Maxwell, Brian Smith, Greg Siegel and Paul McGuigan. How do you see yourself fitting into that lineage? 

I’ve only been able to meet a few of the past buyers so far, but have mad respect for the calendars they confirmed in the room. I hope to continue the legacy of helping break amazing bands and making the Troubadour a part of their stories. Something I pride myself on is my love for music discovery and artist development, so while I know the room will continuously be reached out to by agents with their up-and-coming bands, I also plan to do some reaching out myself for bands I am listening to who I think will resonate with the room and possibly be the next act to break.

How do you discover music and what platforms and formats do you listen to music on?
I live on Spotify and have since I discovered it i think my freshman year of college in 2009. I mentioned i always loved sharing music with my friends and i actually was burning CDs and sending them across the country at one point once I went to college. This was actually first Tunes for Friends concept. Burning and mailing CDs got expensive and once If discovered playlisting and how to be social with it, my CD mixtapes were retired but the concept of Tunes for Friends continued in playlist form and actually continues to exist with a new TFF playlist every 2 weeks! I have a huge set of playlists I follow to find new tunes and pay heavy attention on Fridays with new releases along with what my friends are listening to with the side bar on Spotify. I also pay a lot of attention to Instagram and the artists and friends i follow there. I love to check out what people share or go down the rabbit hole of discovering a new artist and then checking out their similar artist page and continuing on with that same pattern.

Underplays at the club have become something of a calling card with the likes GnR, Billie Eilish, Harry Styles and others playing there, is that something you plan to continue? 

Oh absolutely. A couple have announced and I think my first ever show at the Troubadour will actually be Twenty One Pilots next month as I’m still in Nashville for a sec before making the move to LA. I am so excited for that one!

Oh, we have a couple ideas up our sleeves…